Home » A moment in time » Who won the Legion’s Oratorical Contest and served as president of Boys Nation in the same year?

A moment in time

Who won the Legion’s Oratorical Contest and served as president of Boys Nation in the same year?

Alan Keyes. He is the only participant of both programs to ever do so. The prominent black conservative, born in New York in 1950, is the son of a 33-year Army NCO who received two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star and served two tours of duty in the Vietnam War. His father’s military career had the family crisscrossing the country; he participated in the Legion youth programs in 1967, representing Texas. Since then, there has been one other case of a participant attaining the same feat – but not in a single year.

The talents for oratory and politics Keyes displayed as a teenager have served him well in adulthood. He earned two degrees from Harvard University and has made a name for himself as an author, radio and TV host, U.S. diplomat to both foreign countries and the United Nations, and long-standing political candidate. He has run for president three times as both a Republican and an independent, most recently in 2008; and for the U.S. Senate another three times, most recently in 2004. The Illinois Republican party invited him to settle in Illinois and accept the GOP nomination. He did, but lost the race. His opponent? State senator Barack Obama. Today, he is a conservative activist.

In 1999, the Legion awarded Keyes the National Commander’s Public Relations Award during the Washington Conference.

How long has The American Legion advocated the use of ham radio in disaster preparedness?

Freethinker

Is there really any surprise that this man has failed to win elections with his anti-American, anti-Constitution, and anti-Humanist views?

Here’s just a few of his bizarre ideas, and we can go on and on with these.

“The fundamental premise of liberalism is the moral incapacity of the American people.”

“The ‘separation of church and state’ doctrine is a misinterpretation of the Constitution. “

“Influence can flow from the church to the state, but power and force can’t flow back from the state to the church. So, there is a separation, but that separation was not meant to protect the state from the religion. It was meant to protect religion from the state.”

“They (the ACLU) have succeeded at making the people believe that ‘you can’t legislate morality.’ A more nonsensical statement I’ve never heard in my life.”

“In terms of civil rights discrimination, it is wrong to treat sexual orientation like race, for race is a condition beyond the individual’s control. Sexual orientation, however, involves behavior, especially in response to passion.”